Friday Fun: The Absurd, The Serious, And The (Nearly) Useless In History Trivia (8/15/2008)

After a long hiatus! On this day in…

– 1519, “Panama City, Panama, is founded.” …And they created those dumb party t-shirts. …Oh wait, that’s Panama City Beach in FLORIDA. I get it. …It only seems like that t-shirt phenomenon is almost 400 years old.

– 1534, “Saint Ignatius of Loyola and six classmates took initial vows that would lead to the creation of the Society of Jesus in September of 1540.” …This is a shout out to my graduate alma mater.

– 1914, “A male servant of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright set fire to the living quarters of the architect’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin, murdered seven people, and burned the living quarters to the ground. It is unknown if the servant was arrested or not.” …Never knew this. I’m putting it here because I know you want to know about this too. You’re relying on me for your daily dose of nearly useless history trivia.

– 1939, “The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.” …From the NYT—but I can’t believe this entry didn’t make Wikipedia’s list.

– 1961, “Keiyo Road is specified to be the first driveway in Japan.” …The first driveway?! In 1961? Wow. I just can’t believe this one. …This is a solid candidate for THE most useless information of the day.

– 1965, “The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, marking the birth of stadium rock.” …Does this mean, in addition to being the “birthday” of super concerts, that this is also a kind of celebration day for Hair Bands? If so, see this trip down memory lane on the Top 10 Hair Bands of all time. Ratt and Slaughter were awesome. We just talked about Tesla, for some reason, while on family vacation.

[Sources: NYT, Wikipedia]